Re: Help with the arm64 and ppc64el installation-guides needed
On Sun, Apr 12, 2015 at 6:43 PM, Lennart Sorensen
<lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 12, 2015 at 08:45:50PM -0300, Thadeu Lima de Souza Cascardo wrote:
>> Sorry for jumping in. I would like the chance to complement and clarify
>> some things about ppc64el platform.
>>
>> As Aurelien pointed out, when used in OPAL mode, the system will boot a
>> system running petitboot, which is capable of netboot, booting from
>> disk, and install media.
>>
>> So, will it boot from USB media? Yes.
>>
>> When it comes to IBM latest servers, that are three options for
>> platforms: OPAL (powernv in Linux), as PowerKVM guest, and PowerVM LPAR
>> (both pseries platform in Linux).
>>
>> OPAL has petitboot built-in, PowerKVM uses SLOF and PowerVM uses IBM
>> Open Firmware. The three are capable of booting from optical media, USB,
>> and netboot. With the exception of KVM guests, when a supported
>> graphical card is used, graphical installation should be an option as
>> well. For KVM guests, there is offb, which should work with VNC. Should
>> we enable graphical installation in the media? Or is just netboot images
>> missing graphical support on d-i?
>
> So does this mean that PowerVM LPAR is the same as running on the bare
> metal (which is the only way I have run debian on IBM pSeries systems,
> specifically a p520 power6+ and a p710 power7). Certainly openfirmware
> booting with grub2 is the only method I have ever used. IBM support
> people sure do seem confused when they hear you have no HMC or VM or
> anything else on your pSeries. Just Debian on the bare metal.
>
>> One caveat: I may be mistaken on the current state of support for USB
>> and netboot on SLOF. But considering it's a KVM guest using qemu, there
>> is much more flexibility, if things are downloaded on the host. I would
>> say that is one of the things that we should document on the
>> installation-guide. Is that right?
>>
>> As for wireless network adapters, the systems don't ship with any, and I
>> haven't heard of any testing with any drivers. Nonetheless, those
>> systems support PCI 3.0 and USB 3.0, so there is no reason those
>> adapters shouldn't work, giving enough testing and fixes. But I would
>> leave that out.
>>
>> As for other systems supporting ppc64el, OpenPower members have been
>> releasing new systems using Power8 and supporting little-endian from the
>> start.
>>
>> As already mentioned, older IBM systems could be capable as well, but I
>> wouldn't say that is supported. As for chips from Freescale, I can't
>> tell much. For 64-bit capable old Macs, I suppose firmware could be a
>> problem. For those systems, adopting ppc64 (BE) would offer an option.
>>
>> Why 64-bit? Well, the same answer applies for all platforms. Address
>> space. I suppose some people cannot even run web browsers these days
>> without 64-bit :-). Of course, that has some disadvantages, like the
>> memory footprint because of pointers, that x32 tries to address.
>
> I sometimes wonder if limiting the browser to 2GB of memory is a
> convinient way to prevent the leaks from getting out of hand in the
> terrible code that is in web browsers.
4GB when kernel is 64-bit
>
> --
> Len Sorensen
>
>
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